Linkatharsis: Belabored

Congrats to USA for advancing to next summer's World Cup and finally finding a sport you can beat Mexico in.

Our friend Jim at his blog with an impossibly long name was there.

Every few months, this East River waterfront development plan pops up in the news:

But if Amanda Burden, the persuasively enthusiastic commissioner of city planning, is to be believed, this two-mile strip will soon be transformed into a glimmering, romantic esplanade.

That's great, but here's the thing with East River - as anyone who's run or biked on the path that goes along the waterfront, East River smells like, well, East River. Ain't nothing romantic about that.

Boutique hotel/Lower East Side eyesore THOR stops playing around, opens for real at the end of the month

Currently rooms start at $259 a night, including breakfast, but will bump up to $325 after the grand opening.

Kids, get in on the bargain while you still can.

Would-be copyright infringers beware, CopyGuard will catch you before your piece goes to print. No word on whether certain bloggers will use this to stop themselves from plagiarizing.

Kanye West: "Backpacker with a Benz"

I'm not sure if Kanye West's success means anything for the backpacker crowd, really. Artists who made it between 1989 to 1995, what I like to think of as hip hop's golden age, would have been commercially viable in any era. There just happened to be a happy medium between mainstream audience picking up on hip hop but not to the extent that it did post-"Chronic". Nas, Tribe Called Quest et al. were never that "underground" anyway.